The Level Group

Store Operations — Executive Overview

Store Management reorganization · 2026 · Draft for review

The ambition

Scale more brands
without scaling the team

Two moves make it possible: run operations through specialists by process, not generalists by brand — and cleanly decouple business ownership from operational delivery.

Store Operations · Target model

Starting point

How Store Management works today.

A model that got us here — but doesn't scale

Each Store Manager owns 1–2 brands end-to-end: every activity, every platform. It built real brand ownership and strong knowledge. But four structural limits cap how far it goes.

Limit 01

Unbalanced workload

Load is tied to the brand assigned, not to real activity volume — imbalances hard to correct over time.

Limit 02

Slow onboarding

Every Store Manager must learn the full platform stack of their brand before contributing fully.

Limit 03

Fragile know-how

Expertise sits on one person; when they are absent or leave, the impact is high.

Limit 04

Tools built brand by brand

Platforms are configured and adopted brand by brand, not shared — the same manual setup repeats with every new brand.

Net effect: every new brand tends to require a new person.

The shift

Two shifts, one goal.

Own the process. Get full value from the tools.

Structure · how work is owned

From

Owner of a brand

→

Owner of a process

Tools · what we run on

From

Underused, or not on every brand

→

Fully adopted, and improved

Two compounding shifts. Specialization puts the right person on each task; getting full value from the platforms we already have — rolling PIM out to every brand, improving CMS — makes the task itself faster. Every new brand inherits both.

The transformation at a glance

The whole journey on one page — same logic, three configurations.

From today to target, in three moves

Today · now

Brand-centric

Each Store Manager owns 1–2 brands end-to-end — every process, every platform. Capacity follows the brand, not the real volume of work.

HoBP

Store ManagerBrand 1 · all processes

Store ManagerBrand 2 · all processes

Store ManagerBrand 3 · all processes

Store ManagerBrand 4 · all processes

Step 1 · Verticalization — September

Verticals inside today's structure

Specialists own a process and deliver it across all brands. Team Leaders keep their brands and coordinate the verticals. Low disruption: the hierarchy does not change yet.

HoBP

Team Leader

Catalog

→B1B2B3B4

Site Content

→B1B2B3B4

Marketplace

→B1B2B3B4

Each vertical delivers across every brand of the polo.

Target · Excellence split — on evidence

Business + Store Excellence

Two branches under the HoBP, at the same level: business-facing and operational. Capacity follows real volume; know-how is shared across the vertical, not locked to one head.

HoBP

Business Excellence

Team Leaders

Store Excellence

SE Lead

Catalog

Content

Mktpl.

Same underlying logic — own the process, not the brand — in three progressively decoupled configurations. Detailed structures for the target and the intermediate step are in the backup.

Execution — structure

How we are starting: one pilot polo — the Davide La Moglie polo, 4 brands.

Pilot plan — design follows the data

to date

Done

✓Pilot polo selected

✓People & activities mapped

✓Target structure designed

September

Activate

•Turn on the to-dos

•Observe: load, flow, friction

Oct – Dec

Fix & decide

•Adjust on evidence

•Read real efficiency → decide how to evolve the polos (extend · merge · streamline)

One polo validates Step 1 first. We map actual workload, then design the verticals on the data — not the other way around. The efficiency we read on the pilot then informs how the polos evolve: extend the model, or rethink the polos altogether.

Bonus in scope Extending Jira as the standard channel for brand communication and documentation — replacing ad hoc, brand-specific email threads with one structured, trackable flow.

Execution — tools

Parallel to the structural shift — upgrading the platforms we run on.

Tool roadmap — PIM and CMS move first

August

Now

✓CMS: roadmap & tickets scoped — effort and cost known

•Unlock budget to execute

•PIM: brand-by-brand mapping underway

September

Roadmap set

•PIM: migration roadmap defined

•CMS: dev team allocated, cluster execution starts

Sept – Dec

Rollout

•PIM: migration to all remaining brands

•CMS: cluster delivery per roadmap

•Then: focus shifts to priority-2 tools (Pricebook, others)

PIM and CMS lead because scope and cost are already known. Once delivered, the same tooling lever extends to Pricebook and the remaining platforms.

The payoff

What both levers are expected to deliver.

The efficiency we are after

Axis 1 · Organization

— %

Placeholder — to be filled from the pilot baseline

e.g. brands per FTE · capacity freed · onboarding time

Leading

Time logged on activities — directional, imperfect.

Qualitative

Team Leader observation of real workload — already part of the role.

Result

Brands / volume per FTE vs. a baseline captured before the switch.

Axis 2 · Tools

PIM

–60%

effort reduction on catalog operations where already adopted

Migrated brands cut manual catalog effort by more than half — the basis for the full rollout now underway.

CMS

2.5 FTE

capacity freed per month — ~4,800 h/year at regime

7 enhancement clusters already scoped. Investment ~15k€, payback ~2 months.

Together: the org model puts the right person on the task; better tooling makes the task itself faster. Each new brand inherits both.

Eyes open

What we already know we will need to manage.

The challenges we are steering into

Process standardization

Today many processes are brand-custom — one brand sends the catalog one way, another another; with one we work over email, with another through a structured Jira flow. Verticals require converging on common, repeatable processes.

ApproachOnce a process sits with a single vertical, gaps surface at once — making it far easier to standardize and optimize how TLG runs the activity.

Priority arbitration

When brands compete for the same vertical at once, who decides — without turning the HoBP into the bottleneck.

ApproachA priority scale that weighs brands by real value — not "one brand equals one brand" — and rules in the collective TLG interest, with no brand-defence bias.

Peak concentration

A shared commercial calendar lands peaks on one vertical, across all brands, at the same time.

ApproachAbsorbed by 2+ people per vertical, T-shaped skills, and reserved flex capacity.

People transition

Moving people from generalists to specialists — reskilling and timing.

ApproachNew hires come in already shaped for the new model; for current people, active management and a clearly explained growth path.

Measurement reliability

Time logging is imperfect — a single metric can mislead a decision.

ApproachBaseline captured before the switch, then triangulation: logging (leading) + Team Leader observation + brands/volume per FTE vs. baseline, read together. Directional enough to steer rebalancing, not precise to the decimal.

Backup

B1Target structure — the Excellence split+

The end-state organization in detail.

Operational delivery is organized into process verticals serving all brands. Under the HoBP sit two branches at the same level: Business Excellence (brand-facing) and Store Excellence (the operational engine).

HoBP

Business Excellence

Brand-facing · outcomes & priorities

Team LeaderBrand 1 + 2

Team LeaderBrand 3 + 4

Store Excellence

Operations · vertical expertise

Store Excellence Lead

Catalog

Site Content

Marketplace

A second-order gain: deeper specialists produce better, structured feedback to improve the platforms and tools we use. Verticals shown are illustrative; their final shape emerges from mapping.

B2Step 1 — the intermediate model we activate first+

Verticals inside the current structure — what we turn on in September.

TodayBrand-centric → Step 1 · Verticalizationwe are here → Target · Excellence splitBusiness + Store Excellence

A deliberately low-disruption move: specialists take ownership of process verticals and deliver across all brands of the polo. Team Leaders keep their role and their brands, and coordinate the verticals. The hierarchy does not change yet.

HoBP

Team LeaderBrand 1 + 2

Team LeaderBrand 3 + 4

Catalog

→Brand 1Brand 2Brand 3Brand 4

Site Content

→Brand 1Brand 2Brand 3Brand 4

Marketplace

→Brand 1Brand 2Brand 3Brand 4

Whoever owns a vertical delivers it on every brand of the polo — specialists no longer belong to a single brand.

What stays the same: brand relationships & service levels, the people, Team Leader roles and reporting lines. Moving to Target is triggered by evidence, not calendar.

B3The four roles in the target model+

Who owns what in the target model.

HoBP

Brand orchestrator

Owns the brand relationship and SLAs. Coordinates the two branches, guarantees the cross-vertical view. Single point of accountability per polo.

Team Leader · Business Excellence

Business dimension

Owns business outcomes for their brands and is the day-to-day interlocutor. Brings priorities and expectations to Store Excellence.

Store Excellence Lead

Operational coordination

A senior specialist. Coordinates delivery across verticals, surfaces issues early. The role is coordination, not omniscience.

Specialist

Depth over breadth

Owns 1–2 process verticals across all brands in scope. Because each vertical is staffed by 2+ people, know-how is shared, not lost.

B4How the model is sized — assessment+

One logic, configured per brand or polo.

The logic is universal; the configuration is not. How Store Operations applies is the outcome of an assessment along three dimensions.

Brand

Volume, complexity, strategic weight, SLA requirements.

Activities

Which processes, at which frequency and seasonality, on which platforms.

Resources

People available, their skills, and the critical mass each vertical needs.

Shared configurationMultiple brands served by a shared pool of specialists. Typical for small-to-mid brands.

Dedicated configurationA high-absorption brand keeps its own team — itself organizable by verticals. Same logic, single brand.

Direction, not commitment: the Store Excellence unit is sized by assessment — from dedicated on a single brand, to one polo, to shared cross-polo — optimizing efficiency without creating bottlenecks. Decided vertical by vertical, once the model is proven.

B5Growth & hiring — one entry, two directions+

One entry point, two directions of growth.

Junior hiring has one entry point: Store Excellence — the access point to the organization, not a lower tier. From there, growth follows aptitude: depth on the operational side, or breadth toward the business side.

The straight line is the master track: staying a specialist for a career is a full, recognized outcome — not a missed promotion. The branch to Business Excellence is a pivot from depth (one process, many brands) to breadth (all processes, one brand), for those who show a propensity for the business dimension — spotted on the job.

B6Peaks & resilience — the mitigations+

How the model absorbs peaks.

The commercial calendar is largely shared, so peaks concentrate on one vertical at once. The model is built to absorb that concentration.

2+ people per vertical. No vertical runs on a single person — colleagues cover each other, know-how is never locked to one head.

T-shaped skills. Specialists master one vertical and broaden into an adjacent one — partially interchangeable when load spikes.

Flex capacity. A reserved share of each specialist's time for cross-vertical support during peaks.

Chained verticals. Correlated activities live together, so linked peaks stay within the same skill set.